CIO Speaks: What CFCHE Certification Means for You – and Us

  12.12.17
By Marc Probst, CHCIO, CIO, Intermountain Healthcare

At CHIME17 in San Antonio, I had the opportunity to speak about the CHIME Foundation Certified Healthcare Executive certification program during the morning remarks before our keynote speaker, Abraham Verghese, took the stage. Many of you may not have been able to attend the Fall CIO Forum, though; and even for those present, I didn’t have the time to elaborate beyond a brief mention.

Now is my chance. As CIOs, we can appreciate the value that CFCHE certification brings both to the industry representatives who earn the title and to busy executives like us. Many of us are not just CIOs. We are CHCIO-certified CIOs. Colleagues who have gone through the CHIME Certified Healthcare CIO program likely would agree that passing the examination to obtain CHCIO status is no easy task. The thought of having to retake the test is incentive enough for some CHCIOs to maintain their status.

The CFCHE program mirrors the CHCIO, with an examination process and standards that are equally rigorous. People who obtain CFCHE certification have proven that they have a thorough understanding of the healthcare world we navigate and the challenges CIOs face daily in the provider setting.

The CFCHE program, like the CHCIO that provided its model, is an assessment of knowledge. When we encounter someone with CFCHE certification, we can anticipate that we will not have to invest much time and effort in educating them about our situations and organizations. We will expect them to have a broad understanding of today’s healthcare environment. We may find that what they offer and what we require is not a perfect fit, but we can expect to discover that quickly, in a professional and respectful manner, and that we will continue to explore other ways to partner. Or we may find it is a good fit, which is all the better.

Either way, this is a plus for CIOs and industry employees who commit to the CFCHE path. At this point, the CFCHE program is young and awareness is still growing – just as the CHCIO program was when CHIME launched it in 2008. Today more than 400 healthcare executives and CIOs are CHCIOs.

I encourage Foundation firm members and CHIME members to learn more about CFCHE certification. You can read more about it here.

 

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